Beasts Of The Southern Wild Breakout Star Joins Twelve Years A Slave

Though Quvenzhane Wallis's gripping performance in Beasts of the Southern Wild has been talked about almost constantly since the film premiered at Sundance in January, it's been unclear just how much of an acting career the eight-year-old Louisianan would pursue. She's still a kid, after all, and one who seems refreshingly unlike the processed Hollywood kids we're used to-- would she want to throw away her normal life for roles in movies that wouldn't be nearly as interesting as playing Hushpuppy in Beasts

Even with talk of her snagging a Best Actress nomination by the end of this year swirling, we still don't know the answer to that, even though news of her next acting gig has emerged. Shadow and Act has uncovered a photo tweeted by Lester Zeigler that's described as "Nothrup family," on the set of 12 Years A Slave in New Orleans's French Quarter. Chiwetel Ejiofor, the actor starring in the film as Solomon Northrup, is right there posing with what sure looks like a family… and Wallis, in full period garb, right there with him. Take a look below.

I'm guessing the little boy is Cameron Zeigler, whom Lester Zeigler tweeted about as the "star" of Twelve Years A Slave-- the likeliest explanation seems to be that this is a father snapping a photo of his son on his first big movie shoot. And a commenter on Shadow and Act says the woman in the photo is Kelsey Scott, who plays Northrup's wife-- though earlier reports said Adepero Oduye, the star of Pariah, would take on that role. It sure looks like Scott, though, which means the details of the film's story are a little less clear than we thought.

Honestly, I like it that way-- director Steve McQueen's two previous films, Hunger and Shame, were tightly wound character studies that didn't really inspire anyone to dig into plot details ahead of time, and left many more surprises for the audience in the process. Twelve Years A Slave is a much bigger affair, with a cast that also includes Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Paul Giamatti, Benedict Cumberbatch, Alfre Woodard, Michael K. Williams and Sarah Paulson, among others. We could try and figure out who's playing who, but we'd rather wait for the finished result-- which, if things go as planned, will probably come our way sometime in the fall of next year.